Directory of Quest for the Ring Reports

DIRECTORY OF WHAT WE PRODUCE AND WHEN
Updated as of December 16, 2008
The Quest for the Ring produces reports about NBA professional basketball. Specifically, our primary objective is to determine and report on how games are won and how franchises become able to advance far in the Quest. We started out in 2007 as just a fan site for the Denver Nuggets and have expanded our mission now. Here in 2008-09, we are intending to produce by far the World's biggest and best game and team reports for the Denver Nuggets and for the Detroit Pistons.

We started out with the simple concept of doing one report for each Nuggets game. But after we came up with numerous sub-reports that we wanted to do, the legacy reports grew and grew until they were almost 10,000 words long! So it was necessary to break them down into parts, which are:

--Game, Team, and League Report
--Ultimate Game Breakdowns-Players
--Ultimate Game Breakdowns-Coaching
--Fast Breaks
--Special Reports
--Real Player Ratings for the best 330 NBA players
--Real Player Ratings by NBA team
--Real Team Rating Reports
--Real Coach Rating Reports

A full "Total Report Set" consists of these three reports:
--Game, Team, and League Report (GTLRs)
--Ultimate Game Breakdowns-Players
--Ultimate Game Breakdowns-Coaching

Game, Team, and League Reports (GTLRs): The emphasis and topics will differ depending on the team and it's situation. Whatever is most important for the team in question is what we want to cover. Topics will most commonly be as follows: the real story of what happened in the game or games and why; the state of the team and why it is in that state; fact-based looks at players, positions, coaching; key developments on other key teams; key NBA developments.
Ultimate Game Breakdowns-The Players: How the players did in accurate, total detail, as shown by the Real Player Ratings. Every year the Quest for the Ring will be covering two NBA teams extensively, one in the East and one in the West. For 2008-09, the teams are the Denver Nuggets and the Detroit Pistons. Look for 35 of these reports for Nuggets games, and for at least 35 for Pistons games for the 2008-09 season. We try but do not always succeed to have these reports available by the afternoon of the day after the game.
Ultimate Game Breakdowns-Coaching: How and why the coaching succeeded or failed, in groundbreaking detail and focus. Look for about 25 of these reports for Nuggets games and about 25 for Pistons games for the 2008-09 season. These reports should be available by the afternoon of the 3rd day after the game (within about 64 hours after a game.)
Fast Breaks: Fast Breaks are short articles; most of them are on key topics. They are especially useful when important news breaks and you don't want to remain silent on the subject until a Full Report is finally completed. Virtually all other blogs limit themselves to what we call here Fast Breaks; they do not ever do lenghty articles loaded with evidence, proofs, and statistics like we have here. After we decided to do fast breaks, we have been struggling to figure out how to treat them editorially, and we have latched onto and then later rejected 3 different plans before arriving at the current one, which we expect will be the permanent one.
December 16 Editing Changes: As of December 16, two very important changes were made in the editing plan. These changes are most likely the finishing touches for a plan which has gone through many developmental phases during 2008, and now is ready to be the operational plan for 2009 and for hopefully many years thereafter. We went from complete chaos to a finely tuned editing plan ready for prime time. It took many, many hours or work and iterations.

First, the tight tie-in between Fast Breaks and Game/Team/League Reports (GTLRs) was relaxed. For several months, the evolving editing plan was envisioning that all Fast Breaks would be incorporated in full in ensuing GTLRs. The new plan is that some of the Fast Breaks will stand on their own.

In conjunction with this change, it was necessary to adobt a new production measurement system. We decided to use number of words for this. Despite this change, the majority and probably the great majority of Fast Breaks will still be picked up, expanded upon, and improved to some extent in ensuing GTLRs.

An implication of this change is that we are no longer going to be promising a specific number of GTLRs anymore. But we are now pledging to produce 20,000 words or more a month during the NBA season. And we are still going to be pledging a specific number of statistical reports, such as Ultimate Game Breakdown: Players reports, Real Team Ratings reports, various kinds of Real Player Ratings reports, and so forth.

The other big change is that GTLRs will no longer automatically cover the particular game they are tied to to any extent. Really good or important games will still be covered in detail. Other games will be covered briefly, as has been increasingly the case in recent months and years. The new change is that now, the details of some games, usually near routs or routs where the larger issues being discussed on Quest played out, will hardly be mentioned at all.

When non-game topics are considered more deserving of the limited editorial space and time available, they will get the coverage instead of relatively lopsided particular games. Technically, within the editorial plan, all GTLRs will still be tied to individual games, all of which have been carefully chosen in advance to be the most important games for the team.

An implication of this change is that I will no longer automatically reference a game score in GTLR titles. If there is a score in a title, it means that the game will be covered in some detail. If there is no score in the title, it means that the report will be one that skips the individual game and goes into topics that are broader than any particular

The games that will be covered in total detail are all carefully chosen games between the Nuggets or the Pistons and mostly the best teams of the NBA. None of the full coverage games will be where one of the teams is at a disadvantage because it is playing on back to back nights, whereas the other team is not. Nor will we waste time doing extensive coverage of any game where both teams are playing on back to back nights. There is a reason why the NBA does not allow any team to be playing on back to back nights during the playoffs.
What about the playoffs? Look for about 20 sets (60 GTLR reports) during the playoff season. As long as the Nuggets and/or the Pistons are in the playoffs, we will cover as many of their playoff games as possible. If the combined total of Nuggets and Pistons playoff games is less than 20, which is likely to be the case, we will choose what we think are the best playoff games between other teams for the full coverage. We will of course do full coverage of at least some of the NBA Championship games.
Wild Card Total Report Sets During the regular season, there will be about 4 "Wild Card" Total Report Sets. These will total 12 reports. We will choose four of the most interesting and important games of the NBA not involving the Nuggets or the Raptors for these.
Additional Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players Reports During the regular season, 10 Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players Reports, in addition to the 25 described already, will be produced for the Nuggets and the same will be true for the Pistons. So in total, there will be 35 Nuggets and 35 Raptors Ultimate Game Breakdown-Players Reports.
Special Reports: Special Reports are, as the name implies, about subjects that go beyond the usual. These are creative and controversial magazine style stories usually divided into parts. 8 such reports per year are planned. Look for one report at the end of every month except that their will be no special reports during the playoff months of April, May, and June, and no such report in November. All special reports in full are on both the Quest home page and on Nuggets 1 Special Reports.
Real Player Ratings-All NBA Reports: A very important Special Report that tells you how well and how much each player is really doing. The main report, showing how well each player has been playing, or in other words the quality of that player, will starting in March, 2009, be accompanied by a "Real Player Production Report" for NBA players, which as the name implies, tells you how much a player did, or the quantity. Quality and quantity are approximately equally important if you want to get the best possible view of the value of the NBA players. These NBA wide reports, consisting of the two sub reports of quality and quantity, are scheduled for the middle of March and for the middle of July of each year.
Real Player Ratings by NBA Team Reports Real Player Ratings are now also going to appear in a great new team format. The team reports will come out at the pace of 1 every 2-3 days during two periods during the year: from early January until mid March, and then from late September until late October. Additional and very important Real Player Ratings by Team, for the 8 best teams in the NBA, as the playoffs get underway, will be issued in late April.
Real Player Ratings-Supplemental for the Nuggets and for the Pistons: Two extra Real Player Ratings by Team reports are planned for the Nuggets and for the Pistons, to be issued in late December and in early July. So for these two teams, four Real Player Ratings Reports by Team are scheduled, for late December, for between early January and early March, for early July, and for between late September and late October..
Real Team Ratings-for the 30 NBA Teams These are more accurate and more sophisticated versions of various team ranking lists that you see on the big corporation internet sites. Our system was dead on accurate this past spring in predicting that it would be a Celtics-Lakers Championship and that the Celtics would win. Look for these very valuable reports to come out 6 times per year: on about November 28, December 26, January 24, Februay 22, March 20, and April 18.
Real Coach Ratintgs-for the 30 NBA Head Coaches: This is an annual (in late October) report which gives you total detail on each of the thirty head coaches heading into the new season. There is a total rating and three very interesting and important sub-ratings. As with more and more of our reports, the complete underlying data spreadsheet is available for readers to view on a web page hosted by Google Documents.
Forum Discussions: Nuggets 1 keeps tuned in to the fan base by actively participating in forum discussions. The content you will find in a posting of such discussions will often be a sneak preview of some of the topics and points that will appear in later, full game reports. Discussions are sometimes rude, sometimes funny, lightly edited or even completely unedited, and generally a lot of fun. Forum discussions will go on Quest for the Ring, which will always have every word of original content on it. But forum discussions will be featured prominently on Nuggets 1 Fast Break as well.
Historical Note: The old organization, in the early days of Nuggets 1, was that everything above except for the new forum discussions was combined together into reports that grew to be almost 10,000 words long! Change was needed

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